“…but it has to be done fairly”: Results from an experimental study of Norwegian citizens’ conceptions of climate justice

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“…but it has to be done fairly”

Results from an experimental study of Norwegian citizens’ conceptions of climate justice

Hanna Amalie Holding Jones

Master’s thesis

Spring 2019

Department of Comparative Politics University of Bergen

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Abstract

This thesis explores how Norwegian citizens conceive climate justice. It has been argued that the success of international climate change agreements depends on them being perceived as fair. Even though states are the actors participating in international negotiations, it is the citizens who ultimately will feel the costs of the commitments that states make. If these commitments are perceived as unfair, states will most likely experience resistance from citizens.

At the same time, we know that the economic interests of each state have an important influence on the policy commitments they make. We cannot assume that states will seek to achieve fair international climate policy, and neither can we assume that citizens will want to prioritize climate justice over the national economy. This thesis asks how Norwegian citizens make this trade-off between economy and justice, and which (if any) of the common principles of climate justice are perceived as fair.

The thesis utilizes a distributive justice approach to climate justice. This approach sees the atmosphere as a global common which should be distributed fairly between countries. There are four main principles of climate justice within this approach: polluter pays, ability to pay, grandfathering and equal per capita emissions. Support for these four principles is tested through a randomized between-subjects survey experiment with a non-directive design. The experiment is accompanied by an open question where respondents are given the opportunity to elaborate on their answer in the experiment.

The thesis finds that overall, Norwegian citizens are willing to prioritize justice over the economy when Norway makes commitments in international climate change agreements. Both the polluter pays principle, the ability to pay principle and the grandfathering principle are perceived as fair. At the same time, answers to the open question reveal that collective responsibility is an important part of Norwegians’ conceptions of climate justice. Support for international climate change agreements may not depend so much on the exact distributive principle, as it does on whether or not all countries contribute.

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Forord

Den største og viktigste takken går til min veileder, professor Elisabeth Ivarsflaten. Tusen takk for all hjelp og gode tilbakemeldinger, og for at du har hatt tro på prosjektet hele veien.

Entusiasmen din har gjort at jeg alltid har følt meg mer motivert enn noen gang etter veiledningsmøtene våre.

Jeg vil også rette en stor takk til Norsk Medborgerpanel, både for at jeg ble tildelt et masterstipend og for at jeg fikk lov til å samle inn data i runde 13 av panelet. Tusen takk til Erla Løvseth for all praktisk og teknisk hjelp knyttet til gjennomføringen av datainnsamlingen.

Underveis i prosessen har jeg presentert oppgaven i ulike fora, og vil si tusen takk til alle som har gitt meg tilbakemeldinger. Det setter jeg stor pris på. Takk til klimagruppen i Norsk Medborgerpanel som ga nyttige innspill på eksperimentet, og til Endre Tvinnereim som har vist interesse for oppgaven og kommet med gode råd hele veien. Tusen takk for at jeg fikk lov til å presentere oppgaven min på DIGSSCORE lunsjseminar i februar, og til alle som deltok. Jeg har også ved to anledninger presentert deler av oppgaven min på møter i MOR-gruppen ved Institutt for sammenliknende politikk, og er takknemlig for alle kommentarene jeg fikk.

Til tross for at de to siste årene har vært preget av sene kvelder på Sofie Lindstrøms hus, har de allikevel være de fineste årene i min studietid – og det er takket være den flotte klassen jeg har gått i. Så tusen takk for lange lunsjer, morsomme (og mindre morsomme) pensumvitser, fjellturer, brustester og alt tull og tøys vi har funnet på. Jeg skylder også en stor takk til Idunn som tok seg tid til å lese oppgaven min og kom med veldig nyttige innspill (og for alle memes).

Jeg vil også si tusen takk til familien min: mamma, pappa og Daniel, som alltid lytter og stiller opp for meg uansett. Dere har vært en trygg havn i Trondheim under hele studietiden, og det har betydd mye for meg.

Sist, men ikke minst, vil jeg takke Samson. Du støtter meg alltid, selv når du har hatt mer enn nok med din egen oppgave. Nå gleder jeg meg til en hverdag litt mindre preget av sonifisering og interaksjonseffekter.

Bergen, mai 2019

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Disclosure statement

The data applied in the analysis in this thesis are based on Norwegian Citizen Panel Waves 11 and 13, 2018. The survey was financed by the University of Bergen (UiB), NORCE and Bergen Research Foundation. The data are provided by UiB, prepared and made available by Ideas2Evidence, and distributed by Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD). Neither UiB, NORCE nor NSD are responsible for the analyses/interpretation of the data presented here.

For the sake of clarity, I would like to inform the reader that I have been a part-time employee at Ideas2Evidence, the company that handles the data collection for the Norwegian Citizen Panel, since august 2017. However, I have not had any tasks related to the Norwegian Citizen Panel as a part of my job.

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1.0 Introduction

“Public opinion acts as an important constraint on and facilitator of climate policy”

(Anderson, Bernauer and Balietti 2017, 451)

In both academic and policy circles, it has been emphasized that climate change is inherently a normative issue. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have stated that

“natural, technical and social sciences can provide essential information and evidence needed for decisions on what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. At the same time, such decisions are value judgements” (IPCC 2001, 2, my emphasis).

Scientific findings leave no doubt that the climate is changing due to human influence. Science also tells us what we can do in order to prevent further changes to the environment. These are empirical issues. Whether we should do anything, and in that case what, and how much, are normative questions (Broome 2008, 97).

It has been argued that understanding what would be perceived as fair policy in the face of climate change is crucial for the success of any international climate change agreement. Even though states are the negotiating parties, it is the citizens who ultimately will carry many of the potential costs that come with tackling climate change such as changing their lifestyles or paying higher taxes (Lavik and Pedersen 2017, 342). For citizens to be willing to change their behaviour and not punish the politicians who commit the country to international climate change agreements, policies must be perceived as fair (Jamieson 2011, 29). This dynamic also works the other way around: for politicians to be willing to commit to mitigation, they need to know that voters will not punish them for it (Carlsson et al. 2013, 14).

If we accept that the responsibility for mitigation should be allocated fairly in international climate change agreements, then what could such a fair agreement look like? One approach argues that it is morally intuitive that those who have emitted the most, should have the biggest responsibility (Caney 2005; Page 2008). This is known as the polluter pays principle. This would undoubtfully entail large costs for the Western world, who have emitted greenhouse gases (GHGs) since the industrial revolution. On the other hand, the ability to pay principle argues that economic capacity also should be a key factor determining responsibility for

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mitigation (Caney 2010; Baer et al. 2010). If you have the economic means for it you have a moral responsibility to contribute, no matter what your contribution to the problem has been.

Contrasting this, the grandfathering principle holds that by emitting GHGs, each country establishes a property right to their share of the atmosphere. Therefore, it is only fair that all countries reduce their emissions with the same percentage, with the effect that everyone keeps their share of the global total (Knight 2013; Bovens 2011). Lastly, in the equal per capita emissions principle it is argued that because the atmosphere is a global common shared by all the earth’s inhabitants, it is fair that everyone has an equal right to use it (Agarwal and Narain 1991; Shue 1999; Singer 2010). Therefore, the atmosphere’s remaining capacity to absorb GHGs should be divided equally between everyone on earth. In short, there are many suggestions on how the responsibility for mitigation can be allocated as fairly as possible between countries, yet we know little about how citizens perceive these principles.

At the same time as justice is deemed an important ingredient of any successful climate change agreement, we know that the economic interests of each country play a crucial role in international negotiations on climate change. By most accounts a climate change agreement that tries to distribute the responsibility or mitigation as fairly as possible between countries, will have big costs for Western countries. Several studies have found that states support the justice principles that are in line with their own economic interests (Lange, Vogt and Ziegler 2007; Lange et al. 2010; see also Kallbekken et al. 2014, 11-14). We also know that in many cases, the preferences of citizens are shaped by what is in the best interests of their own country, rather than by what is fair (Carlsson et al. 2013, 3). Therefore, we cannot assume that citizens prefer a fair agreement over one that prioritizes economic interests. If commitments in international climate change agreements entail considerable costs for a country, citizens may not support these commitments. This is perhaps especially important in countries such as Norway, where oil wealth has been and still is a very important part of the economy.

Thus, states are here faced with a choice: Should they prioritize achieving fair international climate policy, even though it may entail large costs? Or should they prioritize the domestic economy over committing to big emissions cuts? For this choice to be democratically anchored, we need to know more about how ordinary citizens think about these questions.

In a discussion of what Norway should do, it is necessary to include a brief remark on what Norway is already doing. Norway’s current international commitments are found under the

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Paris agreement, which Norway ratified in June 2016 (Ministry of Climate and Environment 2016). While international climate politics has been built on a distinction between Annex 1 industrialized countries and Non-Annex 1 developing countries ever since the introduction of the introduction of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, the Paris agreement establishes obligations for all countries, and thus ends this division (Lahn 2018, 30). According to the Ministry of Climate and Environment (2016) under the Paris agreement Norway has committed to reducing emissions with at least 40% compared to 1990 levels within 2030. Several attempts have been made at operationalizing and quantifying the different principles of climate justice and estimating how much Norway should cut in order for our share of emissions cuts to be fair, if following these understandings of justice (Kallbekken et al. 2014; Kartha et al. 2014; Kartha, Holz and Athanasiou 2018). All estimations reach the overall conclusion that Norway’s efforts should be a lot bigger than today in order to be fair. I will not dwell further on these calculations but take as a premise for the discussions that follow that as of today, Norway is not taking its fair share if following the common understandings of climate justice.

1.1 Research question and structure of the thesis

In order to find out whether Norwegian citizens are willing to prioritize fair allocation of responsibility over Norwegian economic interests and how they perceive the common principles of climate justice, I ask the following research question:

How do ordinary citizens in Norway make the trade-off between the Norwegian economy and justice, and which (if any) of the common principles of climate justice do they perceive as fair?

In chapter 2, the thesis provides an overview of the literature on climate justice, both from normative political theory and empirical studies that investigate citizens’ support for these normative ideas. Chapter 3 presents the method and study design employed in the thesis; a survey experiment combined with an open question, as well as the competing hypotheses that will be investigated through the experiment. Chapter 4 presents the results of the analysis of the data from the survey experiment, and discusses their implications for the hypotheses. Chapter 5 presents the results of the analysis of the text data from the open question. The analysis employs both inductively and deductively developed categories. Chapter 6 provides a summary

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of the findings of the thesis, before discussing the implications of these findings and providing a conclusion.

1.2 Contributions

The contributions of the thesis are both theoretical, empirical and methodological.

Theoretically, the thesis sees the literature on the tragedy of the commons and the literature on climate justice in combination, using them as two competing theoretical perspectives to explain citizens’ preferences in international climate policy. Empirically, the thesis expands the research on citizens’ conceptions of climate justice to a new empirical domain: The case of Norway. Whereas most of the existing research has been conducted in big states such as the US, China and Germany, this thesis explores citizens’ conceptions of climate justice in a small state. There may be other mechanisms at work in smaller states, given that the big states stand for much larger shares of the global total of emissions. Additionally, Norway provides a case where the production of oil, a highly polluting activity, is a crucial part of the national economy.

This may lead to other justice preferences among Norwegians than what has been found in previous research. Methodologically, the thesis takes a new approach to the study of climate justice as it provides the respondent with a way of expressing that they do not want to prioritize justice. Most previous studies go straight to asking which justice principle citizens prefer, assuming that they want to prioritize justice over the economy, but this may not be the case.

Designing the experiment as a choice between two options rather than an agree/disagree question may also serve to counteract acquiescence bias, which is a potential limitation of some of the previous research within this field. Lastly, the analysis of the data from the open question takes a largely inductive approach to citizens’ conceptions of climate justice, allowing respondents themselves to identify what is the most important for them in the question of fair allocation. This has never been done before, and contributes to identifying new key factors determining support for international climate policy.

1.3 Key findings

The main finding of the thesis is that Norwegians are willing to prioritize justice over the Norwegian economy. This is strongly supported in the findings of the survey experiment, and also in the data from the open question. It is found that both the polluter pays principle, the ability to pay principle and the grandfathering principle have a high level of support among Norwegians, while the equal per capita emissions principle is less supported. Data from the

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open question triangulates the support for polluter pays and ability to pay, indicating that these two principles are intuitively associated with fair allocation of responsibility for many Norwegians. Additionally, in the analysis of the data from the open question it is found that the idea of a collective responsibility for mitigation seems to be strongly connected to Norwegians’

conceptions of climate justice. The exact distributive principle may not be the most important determinant of policy support, but rather that all countries make a contribution.

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2.0 Climate justice in theoretical and empirical literature

This chapter provides an overview of the normative political theoretical literature on climate justice, and a review of the existing literature that empirically investigates citizens’ preferences for climate justice. The chapter starts by drawing some limitations for the scope of the thesis: I will follow a distributive justice framework focusing on the atmosphere as the resource to be distributed fairly, and I will focus on spatial climate justice, in other words how this resource should be distributed between countries. Next, the thesis discusses the terms common and global common and the potential problems that lie in the distribution of a common, using Hardin’s (1968) theory of the tragedy of the commons, and Gardiner’s (2008) idea of climate change as a perfect moral storm. Next, the chapter provides a review of the existing literature on citizens’ preferences for climate justice. The findings of previous studies are mixed, but indicate that it is relevant to include both economic costs and distributional consequences when investigating citizens’ climate policy preferences. Lastly, the chapter provides a short review of previous research on climate change attitudes in Norway.

2.1 Theoretical framework and delimitations

Within the political theoretical literature on climate change, climate justice is by far the topic that has been the most discussed (for a review, see Lane and Rosenblum 2017, 4). This field is dominated by liberal political theory, and the default analytical framework within this line of thinking is distributive justice. This approach is centred on distribution of resources and seeks to answer three key questions: What is allocated, to whom will it be allocated, and why will it be allocated in such a way? (Barry, Mol and Zito 2013, 363; Roser and Seidel 2017, 106-107).

Commonly, theorists view the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb enough GHGs to avoid dangerous climate change as what is to be distributed (Raymond 2008, 3). The key normative question then becomes how this resource can be distributed as fairly as possible. As for to whom this resource shall be distributed, this question has both a temporal and a spatial aspect (Vanderheiden 2008b, 44). The absorptive capacity of the atmosphere needs to be distributed both between individuals or countries, and between generations. As Vanderheiden (2008b, 44) puts it: “while the latter distributive problem involves the determination of some maximum allowable aggregate level of emissions – where higher current emissions necessarily entail lower future ones given any future atmospheric GHG concentration target – the former allocates this annual total among nations”. Assuming that our goal is to avoid dangerous climate change,

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then the more GHGs we emit today, the less of the absorptive capacity of the atmosphere will be left for future generations. Similarly, the more one country emits, the less there will be left for the rest of the world.

For the first two key questions of distributive justice, political theorists of climate change are quite consensual in their answers. The atmosphere is the resource to be distributed, and it is to be distributed between countries. It is the last question, why the resource should be distributed in such a way, that causes the most disagreement both among academics and policy makers.

Numerous normative principles have been proposed as a basis for allocating the responsibility for mitigation. Therefore, the main contribution of this thesis is to illuminate Norwegian citizens’ conceptions of fair allocation.

This thesis will follow the liberal framework of distributive justice, and view the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb GHGs as the resource to be distributed. As for to whom it shall be distributed, the thesis will focus on spatial climate justice, meaning how the use of this resourse should be distributed between countries (or individuals), rather than across generations.

There are several reasons why distributive justice is seen as an appropriate theoretical framework. First of all, this analytical framework is the one that has been used the most in the academic literature, which puts the findings of the thesis within a larger context of previous research. This allows me to compare my study to others, and build on their strengths and weaknesses. While it is not an argument in iself that this framing has been used by many studies before mine, it is also pragmatic concern, as the critics of the liberal framework rarely provide an alternative analytical framework.

The most prominent alternative to distributive justice, is that of harm avoidance (Caney 2014, 125-127). Several scholars have argued that focusing on those who are threatened by climate change and what can be done to uphold their basic rights and avoid harm is an important alternative to distributive justice. Grasso (2013), for instance, argues that the core moral feature of climate change is that by emitting GHGs some people are harming other people. Therefore, the the main motivation for reducing emissions should be harm avoidance rather than sharing a resource in a fair way. Avoiding harm should be the goal of mitigation and the way the issue is framed, and a fair distribution of burdens should come second (Barry, Mol and Zito 2013, 364). I argue that this is little more than a frame for the issue of climate justice. This approach

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does not provide a cohesive analytical framework through which one can address how to achieve harm avoidance. Shue (2011, 305-306) provides a more nuanced portrayal. While focusing on the way climate change threatens basic human rights, he also argues that justice and harm avoidance are equally important ethical issues. Fair distribution of the responsibility for mitigation is a means while harm avoidance is the end. Therefore I choose to see these two approaches as compatible rather than contradictory. I will follow the framework of distributive justice, yet aknowledge that harm avoidance is an important goal of mitigation.

Another important strength of the liberal framework is that it explicitly acknowledges that there are both benefits and disadvantages associated with GHG emissions. While several commentators attach negative connotations to the liberal “right to pollute” (see for instance Barry, Mol and Zito 2013, 364), it is my opinion that we cannot ignore the benefits of emitting GHGs if we are ever to overcome the problems of climate change. Emissions has caused harm to both the environment and human beings, but fossil fuels have been an important driver of development and increased human well-being in many parts of the world. As Shue (2011, 307) argues: “we are of course trying to reach a point at which none of us are dependent on fossil fuel, but we cannot make the transition by simply pretending we are already there and ignoring the fact that most people are now dependent on fossil fuels”. Whether we like it or not GHG emissions have been central for increasing economic and human development up until today, and therefore it only seems fair that until we find other pathways to development, emissions should be treated as a good to allocate fairly between us rather than something to avoid completely.

At the empirical level, this way of framing the issue is in line with how climate change is discussed in the international policy debate, especially in UN negotiations. Negotiations have largely been dominated by a scientific approach that focuses on the total amound of gases emitted globally, and how much of these current emissions we need to cut in order to reach a set target for concentration of gases in the atmosphere (Lahn 2015, 542). This way of framing the problem logically leads to the main question being how much each country should cut. As this thesis aims at providing results that are relevant for policy, it should follow the framing of the climate change problem that is common in policy debates.

As for the choice to focus on spatial rather than temporal climate justice, this choice is also in line with the goal of providing policy relevant results. While temporal climate justice raises

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numerous important normative questions such as wheter our descendants should be allowed to emit as much as we have done (see for instance Page 2006), in the policy realm these questions are largely resolved. The important question for temporal climate justice is what the ceiling for temperature rise should be, and within what year. This gives us a carbon budget that determines how much we can emit within a given time frame. While this question clearly has important normative aspects, the choice of the technical specifications for temperature rise have largely been made based on reports by IPCC and other similar actors. Based on projections for different scenarios of temperature rise, politicians make commitments to goals such as to keep the temperature rise to well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, as stated in the Paris agreement (Dooley, Gupta and Patwardhan 2018; Lahn 2015, 542-543). Thus, the carbon budget until the end of the century is set, and the important remaining normative question is how we should divide the responsibility for mitigation fairly, in order to keep the global total of emissions within this budget.

2.2 The atmosphere as a global common

The distributive justice approach to climate justice sees the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb GHGs as a global common, in line with the theory of the tragedy of the commons put forth by Hardin (1968). The term common is usually used to refer to “resources held in common by a group of people, all of whom have access and who derive benefit with increasing access”

(Burger and Gochfeld 1998, 7). Following this, a global common is a resource held in common by all people on earth. Hardin’s original example was a field that was open to every herder in the area. If each herder put all of their cattle on the field to graze, the field will be overgrazed and die. This shows that what is individually rational, leads to a collectively suboptimal result.

At the same time, it is irrational for each individual herder to reduce the amount of cattle they send to graze, because they will bear the full loss of feeding one less cattle, while the benefit of less animals grazing will be shared by everyone. “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all”, concludes Hardin (1968, 1244). This theory challenged the influential line of thought represented by Adam Smith: that individually rational decisions will lead to results that are collectively rational (Ostrom 1990, 5).

Hardin’s theory holds that individuals are strictly rational and utility maximizing, and have their own best interest as their ultimate goal (Burger and Gochfeld 1998, 9). This assumption has been weakened in newer research. Ostrom’s (1990) analysis of different cases of management

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of commons all over the world shows that this assumption does not always hold up. Individuals are influenced by norms of behaviour as well as their interest for a specific outcome and are therefore in many cases able to organize in order to avoid overexploitation of a common (Ostrom 1990, 7). Increasingly, it is assumed that actors have mixed motivations and that their actions cannot be explained by rational self-interest alone. Norms and morals also have a strong influence on action (Udéhn 1993, 251). The logical conclusion that follows from this, is that the tragedy of the commons is not unavoidable as norms and values can lead individuals to work together to achieve common goals, rather than only working towards fulfilling their own interests.

Still, it can be questioned whether these conclusions are relevant for the atmosphere as a global common. Ostrom et al. (1999) argue that while some of the findings from commons on a smaller scale can be directly related to global commons, there are some important features of global commons that raise challenges not found in the management of smaller commons. Even though norms can cause people to try to avoid overexploitation in a common, it is not always the case that they do so (Ostrom et al. 1999, 279).

Gardiner (2008) describes climate change as a perfect moral storm, because “it involves the convergence of a number of factors that threaten our ability to behave ethically” (26). First of all, the size of the problems creates challenges related to agreeing on, and enforcing, rules. One of the important findings in Ostrom’s seminal study, is that an important feature of sustainable use of a common is in many cases a set of rules that specify how much of the resource participants can use, how use should be monitored and how rule-breaking should be sanctioned (Ostrom 1990, 185-186). Based on this finding, then, to solve the problem of climate change it seems necessary to create rules regulating GHG emissions that are enforceable and sanctionable on a global scale. In the current climate of international relations so dominated by national interests, this seems nearly impossible (Gardiner 2008, 29).

Further, a dynamic known from Olson’s (1971) Logic of collective action is at play: as the group size increases, the relative importance of each person’s contribution to the desired outcome decreases (Udéhn 1993, 240). As each individual’s contribution to climate change is so small, the effectiveness of one actor decreasing its GHG emissions depends on everyone else doing the same, and this notion can become a source of apathy and an incentive to free-ride on the efforts of others. There is no system uniting all of the individual agents involved in causing

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climate change, and this is what Gardiner calls a fragmentation of agency (2008, 27). Further, with climate change we observe a dispersion of causes and effects related to the global character of the problem. The emissions that cause climate change have to a large degree come from the global North, yet the effects of the problem are and will be felt the most in the global South.

This dispersion also has a temporal effect – many of the effects of GHGs emitted today will be felt by later generations, as some mechanisms following from increased concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere are time lagged (Gardiner 2008, 31) The consequences of overuse of the common are not necessarily felt by the persons causing the overuse, and this reduces incentives to act. Lastly, as Hardin (1968, 1245) points out, pollution is in a way the reverse of the tragedy of the commons, as the problem is related to putting something in rather than taking something out. This means that the common resource will not run out in the same sense that a field will run out of grass or a pond will run out of fish.

In short, for the case of climate change the relationship between cause and effect is far more complex than for a traditional commons problem, and that inhibits our ability to act morally.

This makes it especially hard to overcome the problem of the tragedy of the commons, and we cannot assume that citizens are willing to prioritize fair allocation over the national economy.

2.3 Normative principles for spatial climate justice

In discussions of burden sharing, a distinction can be made between three levels of analysis:

general principles of fairness, burden sharing rules and operationalizations of the rules through criteria or indicators (Ringius, Torvanger and Underdal 2002, 2). The general principles are norms of fairness that are seen as valid across a wide range of issues, while the burden sharing rules apply these general principles to a specific policy area. Within the literature on climate justice, four such general principles have been influential: Responsibility for causing a problem, capacity to fix a problem, sovereignty and egalitarianism. These four general principles are reflected in the burden-sharing rules of polluter pays, ability to pay, equal per capita emissions and grandfathering (Schleich et al. 2016, 51; Carlsson et al. 2013, 3). These are the four burden- sharing rules that have been the most discussed in the academic literature, and they have also (to differing degrees) been influential in international negotiations on climate change. The following subchapters present these four burden-sharing rules, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. In the upcoming discussion, the terms burden-sharing rule and principle will be used interchangeably.

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2.3.1 Sovereignty: Grandfathering

The normative principle of grandfathering argues that each country should reduce its GHG emissions by the same percentage, with the effect that each country keeps the same percentage share of the global total after everyone have reduced their emissions (Barry, Mol and Zito 2013, 366). Thus, it takes current emission shares as the basis for what share of the global total of emissions each country should have in the future. Looking at the issue straightforwardly, this can make intuitive sense. Climate change is a problem that will cause harm to all of mankind, and therefore all of mankind has to make equal contributions to combat the problem (Roser and Seidel 2017, 109). However, this simple account ignores some objections against the grandfathering approach that will be discussed later in this subchapter.

Even though grandfathering is often portrayed as morally indefensible in the academic literature (see for instance Caney 2011, 88-89), it is in my opinion important to understand it. The main reason for this, is the fact that grandfathering has been influential in policy making. When emissions quotas have been allocated in actual policy such as the Kyoto protocol and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, grandfathering has been an influential component (Knight 2013, 410-411; Raymond 2008, 6). Therefore, even though the moral account for grandfathering emission rights seems thin at best, it should be included when exploring citizens’ conceptions of climate justice. Importantly, Norway has been a proponent of using grandfathering as the basis for allocation of emissions quota in international negotiations (Lavik and Pedersen 2017, 348; Lahn 2013, 50). This makes it especially interesting to address Norwegian citizens’

support for this principle.

Knight (2013) argues that the way grandfathering is portrayed in the academic literature, is not in line with how the principle is used in practice. He distinguishes between a weak, a moderate and a strong conception of grandfathering. Weak grandfathering would take the ceteris paribus condition and say that prior emission shares should determine future emission shares only when all else is equal. Contrasting this, moderate grandfathering argues that grandfathering is always relevant for distribution, but does not have to be the only principle that influences how the responsibility for emissions reduction is distributed. The strong version of grandfathering is where grandfathering is the only relevant normative principle determining each country’s share of emissions reductions. This is how the principle usually is portrayed in the academic literature, but is not in line with how the principle is used in actual policy. The Kyoto protocol, for example, only specified mandatory emissions reductions for Annex 1 developed countries and

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is therefore not a case of strong grandfathering (Knight 2011, 411-412). Regardless, the main argument of grandfathering is that current emission shares should be the basis for future emission shares, whether it is considered alone or in combination with other principles.

Therefore, it is this core idea that will be discussed further.

There are two main lines of argument put forward to defend grandfathering as a principle for climate justice; the libertarian and the pragmatic. The most common way of defending grandfathering in the academic literature is by appealing to a Lockean defence of private property. This argument holds that past use of a common establishes a sovereign right to use of the same amount of the common also in the future, as long as it leaves enough of the resource for others to use, and in as good condition as it was (Bovens 2011, 128-129). This is what is known as the Lockean proviso. It seems clear that the Lockean proviso is not fulfilled when it comes to the use of the atmosphere, but seeing as countries have established a right to use their share of the atmosphere they should be entitled to the same share also after global emissions have been reduced. As for the pragmatic or realist argument, it has been claimed that grandfathering is a way of getting countries with high emissions to commit to an agreement.

When countries first are committed, the agreement could be adjusted over time to give a fairer distribution (Caney 2011, 88-89). In essence, the argument is that an unfair agreement built on grandfathering would be better than having no agreement at all. This is, of course, not a normative argument in itself (Bovens 2011, 124-125).

There are several important weaknesses to the grandfathering approach. First of all, it seems doubtful whether this can be accepted as a normative principle at all. This argument builds on something descriptive – how emissions are distributed – and uses this to make a normative argument about how emissions should be distributed (Roser and Seidel 2017, 113). As for the pragmatic defence of grandfathering it seems clear that this cannot be accepted as a normative argument. As for the libertarian line of argument, support for the principle rests on the premise that the atmosphere can be treated as we would treat a piece of land or a pond with fish – in other words, that we can treat a global common as we would treat any common. If we accept that the global commons are “natural resources that remain beyond the control or ownership of any individual, corporation or nation” (Raymond 2008, 3), I would argue that a global common cannot be treated as a common at a lower level. A global common is beyond the ownership of any nation state, and then we cannot talk about ownership rights. Another point refuting the argument that the atmosphere can be treated as any other commons, is the simple fact that it is

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so important. In a resolution from 1988, the UN general assembly asserted that “climate change is a common concern of mankind since climate is an essential condition which sustains life on earth” (General Assembly Resolution 43/53 1988). To determine the right to use such an important resource based on a “first come, first serve” principle seems morally indefensible.

Another important criticism is the fact that grandfathering is at odds with the important moral principle that those who caused a problem should fix it (Lavik and Pedersen 2017, 348). In this respect, grandfathering makes the opposite argument of the polluter pays principle which will be discussed in subchapter 2.3.3. While polluter pays argues that those who pollute the most should have the biggest responsibility for mitigation, grandfathering in effect rewards those who have caused the problem. What makes this criticism even deeper, is the previously discussed spatial dispersion of the causes and effects of climate change. The scope of the damages felt is not proportional to the contribution to the problem. While rich countries in the North have stood for most of the GHG emissions, the damages are felt mainly in the global South (Jamieson 2011, 32). Grandfathering thus argues that those who bear little of the fault for global warming but feel most of the costs should contribute with an equal percentage reduction as those who bear most of the fault, reap most of the benefits and feel fewer of the costs. From an ethical standpoint, this is problematic.

2.3.2 Egalitarianism: Equal per capita emissions

The equal per capita emissions principle is based on the notion that all citizens of the world have an equal right to use the atmosphere’s absorptive capacity (Mattoo and Subramanian 2012, 1084). Because the atmosphere is a global common shared by all of mankind, no one has a right to more than an equal share of its absorptive capacity (Gardiner 2010, 58). In the literature there are two related versions of this principle based on two different rights: The right to equal per capita emissions, and the right to a guaranteed minimum (Gardiner 2004, 583-585).

The former approach is based on a radical idea of complete egalitarianism – that good things should be completely equally distributed (Shue 1999, 532). For the case of climate change, this approach would entail determining how much is left of the atmosphere’s absorptive capacity, and dividing this resource equally between everyone on earth. This will give everyone equal emission rights (Singer 2010, 190). This approach has many proponents among developing nations. Perhaps the most provocative version of this argument was put forth by Agarwal and Narain (1991), who in the report Global warming in an unequal world: A case of environmental

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colonialism argue that Western science on climate change is politically motivated and serve to blame developing countries for global warming. If policies are to live up to ideals such as global justice and sustainability, they argue, the only way of achieving this is to share the atmosphere on an equal per capita basis (Agarwal and Narain 1991, 13). Researchers usually propose that as a basis for actual policy, this principle should be combined with emissions trading. Singer (2010) argues that trading of emissions quota will make the transition from a high to a low emissions society easier for the developed nations, and at the same time be beneficial for developing nations as “they would have, at last, something that they can trade in exchange for the resources that will help them to meet their needs” (196).

The second approach, the right to a guaranteed minimum, takes as its starting point that not all GHG emissions are equal. Distinguishing between survival and luxury emissions, it argues that everyone has an equal right to emit survival emissions. These are unavoidable emissions that a person needs in order to meet their basic needs (Vanderheiden 2008b, 50). Therefore, survival emissions do not cause moral responsibility for climate change, and they should never be restricted to allow other people to keep emitting luxury emissions (Shue 2010, 211-212). Shue (2010, 213) argues that the important difference between the equal per capita and the survival emissions approach, is that while the former treats every emission as equal on the quota market, survival emissions are guaranteed to each person and can never be sold as part of a quota scheme. This guarantees that the wealthy will never be able to buy all of the quotas of the poor and leave them unable to satisfy their basic needs. Only luxury emissions should be subject to sale.

Many of the common objections against the per capita approach are based on practical, rather than normative, concerns. Lavik and Pedersen (2017, 347) argue that the principle can be interpreted as both a historical principle with retroactive force, as well as a time-slice principle that would start from the day an agreement is signed and ignore all previous emissions. Even though one might agree with their argument that this is a potential source of controversy, it is not an argument that refutes the principle on moral grounds. Similarly, the argument made by Gardiner (2004, 586) that reaching a common definition of a subsistence emission will be challenging, does not weaken the appeal of the principle from a normative standpoint. Lastly, the argument that equal per capita emissions can give countries incentives for increased population growth in order to obtain more emissions permits is also practical by nature, and can

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be solved by tying emissions permits to projections of population growth within a given year (Singer 2010, 191, 194).

A more fundamental criticism of the equal per capita emissions approach, is the fact that allowing for some inequality in the distribution of emission rights might lead to a fairer outcome. There are some factors outside human control might affect needs for emitting GHGs, such as the availability of renewable energy and climate of each country (Lavik and Pedersen 2017, 348). This can be framed as a question of whether we are concerned with equality of outcomes or equality of opportunity (Vanderheiden 2008a, 50). If we are concerned with equal outcomes, then equal per capita emissions might lead to an unjust result for those living in societies with higher energy needs due to natural circumstances. Another important objection is the fact that buying emissions permits can be seen as a way for high-emitting countries to buy off the poor rather than acknowledging and taking the consequences of their responsibility for causing climate change (Gardiner 2010, 59). The egalitarian approach, if used as a time- slice principle, completely ignores the notion that the ones who caused a problem should be the ones to fix them (Lavik and Pedersen 2017, 348).

2.3.3 Responsibility: Polluter pays

The polluter pays principle (hereafter PPP) builds on the relatively intuitive principle of justice that those who have caused a problem should bear the costs of fixing it. Thus, for the case of climate change, it is argued that the responsibility for mitigation should be distributed proportionally in relation to how much GHGs each nation has emitted (Page 2008, 557). The foundation for applying a principle based on responsibility for causing the problem may be especially strong for the case of climate change due to the unequal distribution of costs and benefits related to GHG emissions. As some nations controlled industrialization and received most of its benefits, while other nations feel most of the costs of global warming, it only seems fair that the actors who have polluted the most have a moral responsibility for dealing with the related costs (Caney 2010, 205).

There is some ambiguity in the literature as to whether this principle should be interpreted as a historical principle or a time-slice principle. Some (see for instance Mattoo and Subramanian 2012, 1086; Shue 1999, 534) distinguish between PPP and the historical responsibility principle, portraying PPP as a time slice-principle principle focusing on current emissions, while the historical responsibility principle focuses on cumulative emissions over time as the

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basis for how much each country should cut. Others make no such distinction and see PPP as a historical principle (see for instance Caney 2010, 205; Roser and Seidel 2017, 118). This seems to be more of a case of conceptual ambiguity rather than an actual disagreement, as what these authors present as respectively the historical responsibility principle and PPP in practice entail the same. Therefore, for the sake of simplicity, I see the PPP as a historical principle. This interpretation of the principle has been promoted by many developing nations, and an important contribution putting this principle on the agenda of international negotiations for the first time came from Brazil in their proposal to the UNFCCC in 1997 (Mattoo and Subramanian 2012, 1085).

In the literature there are two main objections raised against PPP. Firstly, in its historical interpretation the principle is built on citizens today inheriting responsibility for the emissions of their forefathers. Levels of GHGs in the atmosphere started rising during the industrial revolution, and this means that the persons responsible for most of the GHGs in the atmosphere today are already dead (Page 2008, 559). The share of the concentration of GHGs that can be accounted to persons who are still alive is quite small – one estimate says about 10% (Mattoo and Subramanian 2012, 1085). Is it really morally acceptable that today’s citizens have a moral responsibility for dealing with emissions they did not cause? Shue (1999, 536-537) argues that while common conceptions of justice would hold that persons cannot be held accountable for actions by other persons which they had nothing to do with, this does not hold for the case of climate justice. The emissions of our forefathers are far from unrelated to us. As a part of an enduring economic structure we inherit the benefits of their emissions, and therefore it is also fair that we should inherit the costs.¹ Additionally, as the spatial and temporal dispersion of climate change causes many of the costs of GHG emissions to be borne by someone who have not benefited from the carbon-driven industrialization, it only seems fair that we inherit the responsibility.

Secondly, it is argued that there can be no moral responsibility attached to the emissions of our forefathers, as they did not know that what they were doing was harming the planet (Roser and Seidel 2017, 125). Thus, as Shue (2015, 14) puts it, by allocating responsibility using PPP “we wold have the wrong people even if there were an offense, and the relevant action was not an

1 This is sometimes treated as a separate principle; the beneficiary pays principle (BPP). As the arguments in favour of this principle are similar and closely related to those in favour of PPP, I will not include this principle in my discussion.

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offense when it was done”. Here, it is useful to draw a distinction between excusable and culpable ignorance. There are some things we should know, while other things it is not reasonable to demand that people know. It might not even be possible to know it because the knowledge is not available yet. For the case of climate change, then, it seems that many of our forefathers were excusably ignorant, as the consequences of emitting GHGs were not yet known when the industrial revolution started (Roser and Seidel 2017, 125). It can be argued, however, that at one point in time this ignorance went from being excusable to being culpable. Knowledge about global warming has been growing, and at least from 1990 when the first IPCC report was released, it is commonly held that actors should have known that GHG emissions harm the planet. It could even be argued that as it has been widely known since long before 1990 that GHGs might damage the planet, actors should have taken precaution and reduced their emissions although the science was not yet certain (Caney 2010, 208). And, crucially, GHG emissions have continued at uninterrupted speed long after it became impossible to plead excusable ignorance, indicating that our forefathers would not have changed their behaviour, even if they did have the information we have today (Shue 1999, 536).

2.3.4 Capacity: Ability to pay

The ability to pay principle (hereafter APP) is based on the argument that the countries with the greatest capacity for it, should have the greatest responsibility for mitigating (Page 2008, 561).

Following this principle, costs should be distributed proportionally in relation to the capacity of each country (Ringius, Torvanger and Underdal 2002, 7). When discussing this principle capacity is usually understood as economic capacity and operationalized as GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing parity. Economic capacity is not necessarily the only resource needed to combat climate change, but in practice this is usually highly correlated with other important assets such as technological capacity and knowledge (Kartha et al. 2014, 12). APP is an entirely forward-looking, time-slice principle. It does not consider different contributions to the problem, but rather the means each party has for fixing the problem (Caney 2010, 213).

It has been argued by several authors that this principle should not be interpreted to mean that everyone should contribute in proportion to their economic capacity (Roser and Seidel 2017, 141; Page 2006, 171). Some countries might have just enough resources to meet the needs of their own citizens, or they might not be able to meet them at all (Page 2008, 561). Bearing costs of mitigation, then, could be detrimental for the overall standard of living in the country. It is

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argued that only those countries that have more than what they need to meet the basic needs of their citizens should be obligated to mitigate (Roser and Seidel 2017, 141).

The main objection towards this principle, is the fact that it does not consider each party’s contribution to causing the problem, which by most accounts is morally relevant (Caney 2010, 214). Theoretically, a rich country that had contributed very little to climate change could be left with a big responsibility for mitigation. Conversely, a poor country that has polluted a lot would have little or no responsibility. This begs the question of whether you can gain a big responsibility for mitigating just because you are rich, no matter what your actual contribution to the problem is, and whether you can be freed from responsibility if you are poor. APP is at odds with the important moral convention captured in PPP; that those who cause a problem should clean it up themselves. In practice, historical contribution to climate change and economic capacity are highly correlated, meaning that for the most part countries that should take big responsibility for mitigation following PPP will also have a big responsibility following APP (Mattoo and Subramanian 2012, 1090). This does not make the moral grounds for this principle any stronger, however, and most accounts of APP do not see it as a principle that should be used alone, but rather in combination with other principles such as PPP.²

2.4 Previous research

The following two subchapters provide a review of the existing research on citizens’

conceptions of climate justice, as well as studies that investigate climate change attitudes in Norway.

2.4.1 Empirical studies of citizens’ perceptions of climate justice

While climate justice mostly has been discussed within theoretical literature, there are a few studies that investigate this topic empirically. This subchapter discusses the existing research in order to identify the state of knowledge about citizens perceptions of climate justice, as well as strengths and weaknesses of the studies that have been conducted so far. This allows me to take this into account in the design of my own study. The scope of the literature search was restricted to focus on studies that empirically investigate attitudes towards climate justice, and the relationship between justice perceptions and willingness to pay for mitigation. While there

2 The Greenhouse Development Rights principle (Baer et al. 2010) and the Hybrid principle (Caney 2010) formulate a combination of PPP and APP as one coherent principle. As the main arguments are similar to those in favour of APP and PPP alone, I will not discuss these principles here.

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are many studies that focus on willingness to pay for mitigation (see Johnson and Nemet 2010 for a review), these have been considered outside the scope of this review as the focus of the thesis is the relationship between distributive principles and the willingness to pay for mitigation, rather than willingness to pay alone.

The most important differences between the existing studies lie in their choice of respondents, and the method that they use. The earliest studies of this phenomenon investigated the attitudes of negotiators and other stakeholders in international climate negotiations (see for instance Lange, Vogt and Ziegler 2007; Dannenberg, Storum and Vogt 2010; Hjerpe et al. 2011), while more recently the focus shifted towards the attitudes of citizens. I will focus my review on the studies that investigate citizens’ attitudes, as these are the most relevant for my study. The existing studies mainly employ different kinds of survey experiments, but some also use lab experiments or data from regular surveys. While findings are mixed, a majority of studies seem to reach the overarching conclusion that citizens’ opinions are influenced by both the costs a policy will entail, as well as how these costs are distributed.

Cai, Cameron and Gerdes (2010) investigate the relationship between willingness to pay for mitigation and individual distributional preferences. They use data from a survey conducted in 2001 with a sample of college students from the US and Canada. It should be noted that the data are quite old, and that the sample does not mirror the general population. The survey does not explicitly include normative principles, but instead gathers information about opinions about “the extent to which responsibility for the costs of climate change mitigation should be borne by various payers” (Cai, Cameron and Gerdes 2010, 435), both domestically and internationally. Their main finding is that for some, willingness to pay for a policy is higher when it is in line with their normative preferences. For others, distribution does not affect support. This finding provides a nuanced image of distributional preferences, and indicates that it can be relevant to ask the basic question of whether or not respondents want distributive justice in the first place, as I do in my study. While it may not be a shocking conclusion in itself that willingness to pay can increase if the distributional consequences of a policy is in line with your normative preferences, the authors argue that surveys that aim at addressing the willingness to pay for a given policy should mention the distributional consequences of the policy explicitly. Respondents do not only take into account the costs of policy, but also how they will be distributed. If these consequences are not explicitly mentioned in the survey, respondents “are at liberty to impute whatever unspecified distributional consequences seem

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most probable to them, and such perceptions may differ across people in unobserved ways”

(Cai, Cameron and Gerdes 2010, 454). This conclusion underlines that finding out more about individuals’ normative preferences, which is the goal of my study, is important in order to ensure that commitments made in international climate change agreements are supported by the population. Population support for a policy does not necessarily depend on the cost alone, but can also be affected by how burdens are distributed between different actors.

Carlsson et al. (2011) build on the study by Cai, Cameron and Gerdes (2010) and also explore the effect of distributional consequences on willingness to pay for mitigation. They use a mail- based survey experiment that was sent out to a random sample of Swedish citizens. Respondents are given a short text explaining that the goal of emissions reduction is a reduction of 60% of global emissions within 2050, and that the total cost is the same no matter which distributional rule is followed. Thus, they isolate preferences for the different burden-sharing rules, rather than identifying willingness to pay for different levels of emissions reduction (Carlsson et al.

2011, 1530). The experiment is a choice experiment that asks respondents to choose between two alternative ways of distributing the costs of mitigation. Contrasting Cai, Cameron and Gerdes (2010) they include explicit mention of burden sharing rules rather than assigning responsibility to different actors. The authors include three principles: the current and historical interpretation of PPP, and equal per capita emissions. They argue that this choice is made in order to reduce the cognitive load for respondents, but it should be noted that the exclusion of APP weakens their results, as several other studies establish citizen support for this principle (see Gampfer 2014 and Schleich et al. 2016 discussed below). Their main conclusion is similar to that of Cai, Cameron and Gerdes: “distributional consequences are important and can affect citizens’ willingness to accept costly measures” (Carlsson et al. 2011, 1533). The authors find that equal per capita emissions is the principle that Swedish citizens prefer the most, while historical emission is the least preferred. In addition to the choice to leave out APP, this study is also limited by the fact that respondents are forced to choose between two justice principles and are not provided with a way of expressing that they do not have a preference.

Carlsson et al. (2013) have a design similar to the study by Carlsson et al. (2011), but the study is conducted digitally in the United States and China. This study includes the APP principle as well as historical and current PPP and equal per capita emissions, and the aim is to find out which of these four burden-sharing rules respondents prefer. Respondents were presented with pairs of burden sharing rules and information about the monthly cost for the household given a

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goal of a 60% reduction of global emissions distributed by each rule, and asked which of the two options they prefer. The main finding of the study is that in both countries, respondents prefer the burden-sharing rule that is the least costly. Chinese respondents have the strongest preference for historical responsibility, while American respondents prefer current responsibility. Similar to Carlsson et al. (2011), the study assumes that respondents have a preference for a justice principle, and concludes that “[…] the two countries are similar in that their respondents’ express preferences that are strongly correlated with how advantageous a particular rule is for their country” (11). This conclusion should be treated with some caution.

The finding could also be interpreted to mean that citizens do not have preferences for rules per se, but rather that they prefer whatever is the most economically beneficial for their country. In line with the finding by Cai, Cameron and Gerdes (2011) that justice matters for some, respondents should be provided with a way of expressing that justice is not important for them.

Bechtel and Scheve (2013) conduct a conjoint experiment with data from France, Germany, the UK and the US. In the experiment several aspects of a climate change agreement are varied:

number of participating countries, costs in percentage of GDP operationalized as average monthly cost to household, share of emissions represented by participating countries, sanctions, monitoring and burden sharing rule for distributing the costs of implementing the agreement.

The options included were historical and current PPP, APP interpreted as “only rich countries pay” and “rich countries pay more than poor countries” (Bechtel and Scheve 2013, 13764).

Respondents were presented with two hypothetical agreements where these six elements vary, and asked to choose which agreement they preferred. They were also asked whether or not they would vote in favour of the agreement in a referendum. This provides respondents with a way of expressing explicitly that they do not want their state to commit to an international climate change agreement, and is a strength of this study. The authors find that cost to the household is by far the most important determinant of support for a climate change agreement. They find some influence of distributive justice principles on support for an agreement, but this effect is much smaller than that of cost. Interestingly, support for an agreement increases slightly if it is not based on “only rich countries pay”, but there is no significant difference between historical PPP, time-slice PPP or APP where the rich countries pay the most (Bechtel and Scheve 2013, 13764-13765). Thus, it seems that the aspect of justice that respondents in these developed countries care the most about is whether or not developing countries contribute with something.

The exact details of the principle do not seem to make much of a difference, as long as all countries pay.

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Schleich et al. (2016) investigate citizens’ support for different burden-sharing rules through analysis of survey data from Germany, China and the United States. Respondents were asked

“how strongly should the following rules be considered when allocating costs in order to reduce global warming” and presented with a short description of PPP, APP, grandfathering and equal per capita emissions. The information does not include the costs of following each rule, which is a limitation of this study. Answers were given on a five-point scale from “very weakly” to

“very strongly”. This could cause a risk of acquiescence bias, which is reflected in the fact that in all three countries a large share of the respondents express strong support for several principles (Schleich et al. 2016, 57). The study finds that in all three countries, the ranking of the principles is identical. Respondents in all countries prefer PPP, followed by APP, equal per capita emissions and lastly grandfathering.

Lange and Schwirplies (2017) use data from two different surveys to investigate the equity preferences of citizens from Germany, the US and China, and those of negotiators from the same countries. Citizens were presented with a description of PPP, APP, equal per capita emissions and grandfathering, and asked “how strongly should the following rules be considered when allocating costs in order to reduce global greenhouse emissions?” (Lange and Schwirplies 2017, 514).³ The survey was conducted in 2013. The position of the different countries was identified through surveying experts that have participated in international climate policy making on what they think is the position of different countries. These data were collected in 2004. The study concludes that overall, there are some inconsistencies between the position of negotiators and what citizens actually prefer. It is found that the equity preferences of citizens are equal to or higher than the expected position of their delegates. This conclusion demonstrates the necessity of increasing knowledge about citizens’ preferences for burden sharing in international climate policy, as this can be a step toward ensuring democratic anchoring of policy commitments made in international climate change agreements. Some weaknesses of this study should be noted, however. Firstly, the survey of negotiators is almost ten years older than the survey of citizens. Expected bargaining positions may have changed as knowledge about climate change has increased. Secondly, data on the position of country negotiators is based on experts’ expectations of the positions negotiators would take. This could have been identified by analysing the positions parties actually did take in negotiations, which also could have given data for citizens and negotiators that were closer in time.

3 This study is based on the same data as Schleich et al. (2016)

“…but it has to be done fairly”: Results from an experimental study of Norwegian citizens’ conceptions of climate justice